Unable to access External Drives and Disk Utility after updating to macOS Sonoma.

14TB ExFat hard drive only a month old disappeared one day last week. I've updated to Sonoma a while ago, not recently. I didn't think it was the OS as the problem until I plugged in my ghosted 14TB drive into another iMac that is still running Ventura. It was all there, but said the disk was corrupted now when plugged in. I bought an 8TB ExFat drive to salvage what I could out of the 14TB apparently going bad. I couldn't afford to spend another $380+ on another 14TB drive. I would have to be selective in what I backed up. It took me 3 days of leaving the machine on to transfer files and now I'm having to do it again in hopes of reformatted my 14TB to APFS is going to solve the issue with it disappearing. This operating system has cost me weeks of time and thousands of dollars in damages.

I wonder just how long we will have to tolerate the problems we all seem to have with Sonoma?

One might think that a month long thread of folks all over the world having issues that are ALL VERY SIMILAR would get a reaction, or even an UPDATE to solve the abyss Apple has put us into..

so many hours lost....

You can only create conspiracy theories and explain to yourself that it may be caused by a hardware defect of the new processors or for economic reasons, it is cheaper to create a new system than to improve it and correct its errors. But it cannot be denied that I have never experienced so many errors with the Apple operating system since 1994 when I use it. And Apple doesn't improve them at all.

As new FEATURES appear in 14.2.1 (and we certainly hope the updates DONT cause NEW ISSUES....

i have just had a solid Open Office document refuse to save due to Sonoma claiming the document was opened by an UNKNOWN USER...

i read and write to that document daily...

maybe its time for some Class Action towards Apple for the unbelievable grief so many of us are being served all because we have been taught to believe UPDATES FIX THINGS ...when clearly , with Sonoma, they do not.

One Used to be able to rely on Apple products....

i am so very close to going UBUNTU!

Confirm. Apple remove negative comment .

i wrote several times about this problem.

the only solution is wait 30 minutes every time you insert an HD. Or recover it with windows.

MacOS is not for professional use anymore .

give a chance to windows .

Last update NOT SOLVE the problem .

Only slow down the Mac.

the update brick the system during startup.

after 3 reboot the Mac works . But is slower than before.…. and sure I had to wait one hour to see the hard disk

my advice is stay miles away from this OS.

Expecially if you work with your Mac

I can no longer work with an external drive for my audio sample libraries. The library management program refuses to use any external drive to manage, add, or delete any samples or sample libraries. The management program now only wants to use Users>Shared as the only option. I bet you that a lot of software developers have complained to Apple already because of this.

In addition to ejecting my ExFAT partition of my external drive on Sonoma I've also been using Disk Utility to eject the external drive as well just to make sure the light on the drive turns off and spins down the drive (maybe that is the issue?). You have to first enable the "Show All Devices" view in Disk Utility to see the external drive and not just the partition(s).

Having the same issue for an external drive formatted to exfat that was used on a Macbook Air that hasn't been updated in about a year. Recently tried using on a Macbook Pro updated to 14.3.1. Exfat can't be accessed through disk utility (greyed out). Have Windows 11 installed on it also. Windows recognizes it.

Since "upgrading" to Sonoma 14.3.1 I no longer have "permission" to do activities that I used to do before as the Administrator. I can't use Photo to edit and share. I can't move things around on the desktop, etc. I tried disk utility but it changed nothing after running first aid. When is Apple gonna fix this problem??

My drive was freshly bought 2TB NVME and no encryption at all, I formatted in APFS, xFAT and FAT nothing was helpful, when connect to Android mobile it was detected then disappear after disconnect or start to copy files, but drive is working fine in Windows and Android OS as well as Ventura macOS, all issues in Sonoma

No option in Desktop

Apple will not fix this error. Too many time users have reported issues.

Stay to ventura will solve the problem only for short period. When the System will become obsolete (Apple have increased the speed of update to force customer to Buy new product) you have to update, and this problem will be there waiting for you.

The real solution is abandon Apple and come to Windows or Linux.

Buy a mac today is not a good idea. Not upgradable at all and they become obsolete in short time and due to their policy the backward compatibility of 3rd part software is limeted or impossible. Windows 11 now is fully comparable to Apple (or better).

Here we are on March 12, 2024 and a new iteration of Sonoma was released last week, macOS Sonoma 14.4. The big question on this thread is. Does macOS Sonoma 14.4. fix the External Hard Drive connection issue that has plauged so many of us? My external drive problem has mostly been a great inconvenience and waste of time caused by initially upgrading an almost new 2023 Mac Mini M2 from Ventura 13.6.3 to Sonoma 14.2.1. After much frustration trying to get my APFS formatted 2T NVMe external drive to work correctly with Sonoma, I was able to restore my Mac to Ventura 13.6.3. Just like magic, my little 2T drive functioned perfectly again, just as it always had prior to Sonoma. I tried Sonoma again with versions 14.3 and 14.3.3 getting the same old same old with my external H.D.

I am reluctant to clean install Sonoma 14.4. only to again clean install Ventura 13.6.3 and restore settings and files via Time Machine back up to get my H.D. working again. I've become rather proficent and made a routine of upgrading and downgrading Mac OS software because of Sonoma. Why? I expect better than this from Apple.

I have lost data, and somehow 15,000 files ended up in the trash, and now I have to go thru them and iCloud to see what I can resurrect! I am absolutely upset that this happened and I don’t understand why! I upgraded to Sonoma too. Apple doesn’t know what to do! Shouldn’t they know?

I moved to Mac OS when Windows Vista was a disaster.

Now Sonoma and no external drives are working as they should. Usb hub not working .. Apple, after many good years you have actively kicked me out.